College students a favorite target of scammers

Tuesday

Sep 29, 2015 at 6:00 AM

It’s clear college students are back in force. Businesses are thrilled. But they’re not the only ones happy to see the students and their money.

College students are prime targets for scams - for a lot of reasons. They’re not as savvy. It’s often the first time they’re making financial decisions on their own. They also tend to have clean credit – which is a good when you’re stealing identities.

Javelin Strategy & Research, a California consulting firm, found that 20 percent of college students receive fraud notifications, triple the rest of the population.

There are so many different angles to lure college students that thieves can’t help themselves. But if you can recognize them, they are easier to avoid.

What college student wouldn’t want to get more financial aid? An offer of additional student loans is a typical trick to extract personal and financial information. In the loan scam, students will get a call or email saying they are eligible to borrow more.

Eventually the crooks will want banking information. That should set off the alarm bells that the offer is not legit. Stick to the rule of never giving out personal or financial information to anyone with whom you are not familiar.

The tuition scam is a high-pressure trick to scare students into forking over money by getting them to believe that if they don’t make a tuition payment immediately via a cash card their enrollment is in jeopardy. No college will call a student to demand payment on the spot. Never give in to immediate demands for money. If you have a question about what you might owe, contact the school’s finance office.

The Better Business Bureau recommends students lock up personal documents and ensure their computers have updated virus protection. And give no one access to debit cards.

Then monitor all your accounts. Open credit and debit card statements to look for unexpected transactions. And be sure to check AnnualCreditReport.com to get each of the three credit reports you are entitled to each year. Consider getting one of them every four months so you can spot any potential fraud as quickly as possible.

Going to college is about learning. Unfortunately, sometimes that learning is about real-world issues like scams.

Mitch Lipka of Worcester is a nationally known consumer columnist and runs TheConsumerChronicle.com. Email him at ConsumerNews@Aol.com.